Where did he go?

Who? You! Me? Yeah you!

I'm sorry I've let the blog slide for so long this month. I could tell you how busy I've been, but that would seem like whining and I'm not because busy is great! Just sometimes busy means too busy to find enough to write another article. Fortunately other bloggers are keeping busy providing useful insight into Revit. So I may have been quiet but the information keeps flowing and I thank each of the others for that.

So what is new? Revit Building 9, Revit Structure 3 and Revit Systems 1!! That's what!! The release of these new versions of Revit draws near!

I attended three Revit user groups last week and saw presentations of each courtesy of Autodesk, LA CAD, South Coast Revit User Group, Inland Empire Revit User Group and LA Revit User Group.

Amy Fietkau, an application specialist for Autodesk (also "Ask Amy"), presented the beta software and we were released from the quiet period on Thursday night at the last show. She did a fine job of showing/explaining and fielding the myriad questions thrown her way. I hope she got some rest over the weekend because not only did she do a whirlwind tour of three user groups but she also visited a bunch of area firms in between with Chuck Keeley, Southern California Autodesk Sales Representative. Almost rock stars! Just missing the tour bus and the deli trays, actually there was food...so just the bus then. Next time if you want a bus, let me know, I know some places you can contact from my old roadie days...

The LA presentation drew the largest crowd of over 100 folks and John A. Martin & Associates provided the venue. The majority of those in attendance at each meeting were architects and primarily interested in Revit Building 9 with a few engineers in attendance in LA.

So what can I say about the new software? Too much to mention in this brief post unfortunately.

I can say the new room features are very nice. The ability of colums, in-place walls and curtain systems to be room bounding is great! Keynoting will be a very welcome addition for many. The very significant increase in control over the visibility of linked files is huge! Additional copy/monitor control for walls and slabs and additional API changes allowing creating views and sheets will be an asset too. Probably the biggest feature is the way we can save views from one project and use them in another. If you save a sheet view it will bring along all the related views on the sheet as well!!!

One of my favorites that Revit Building inherits from Revit Structure is the improved options for sloping steel making it much simpler to slope steel under a warping roof surface.

Revit Systems looks great! One feature, the creation of air flow analysis through a third party application like Trane Trace and the resulting color fill plan in Revit, drew the comment that it could save WEEKS in the engineering process alone.

We do need to keep in mind that it is release one software. As such the focus has been on providing engineering data and not on completing the documentation of the design. Therefore, Revit Systems will be sold only as a bundle with Autodesk Building Systems until the documentation features are filled out more completely. The intended workflow is to only use Revit Systems if you are working with an architect using Revit Building. There is no intended workflow for using it with an architect using AutoCAD or other 2d/3d cad software at this time. I surmise that it is possible, just not intended...

All for now!!